Sharing the Latest for the Summer Semester in Acting: Guest Blog

With film shoots happening all over town, The Fringe Festival and Summerworks Theatre Festival are both opening, and the Toronto International Film Festival is just around the corner, Toronto is a center of cultural activity. There is also a tonne of action happening right here at the Yonge and Dundas campus of the Toronto Film School.

We want to congratulate our new Head Teaching Assistant Kearsten Johanssen for joining the team. Kearsten is a Toronto Film School. graduate and 2015 program Valedictorian. She began her new position with us in the Spring replacing Omar Zamir. Omar has taken on a position as a student advisor and we want to wish him the best in his new endeavour.

We also want to congratulate our film guru Yale Massey (who has been a part of the Acting faculty since the beginning) on his new position as the co-coordinator for the Film Production Diploma. It is bittersweet to see Yale change departments but we are thrilled to have the opportunity to further our collaborations with the Film Production Diploma. We also continue to focus on collaborations with other departments across Toronto Film School campuses including:

Actors starring in each other’s Term 6 films and monologues

Film Production students helping to produce our Term 6 Greenlit Films

Actors’ Voiceovers being used by Video Game designers at Steeles Campus

Writing Program students pitching scripts to our Term 5 Acting Students for the Greenlight competition and using actors as readers for their own films

In theatre news, Piotr Biernat, our resident movement instructor, is on board to direct our very first Anton Chekhov play Three Sisters which will open during showcase week between September 11th and 16th. We’d also like to congratulate our Term 6 graduating class who will be starting production on their short films under the guidance of producer and graduate, Chad Tailor. The directors will be on location for the first half of the semester. Make sure to inquire with them as to whether they are holding auditions for acting program students. Or do anything to get involved! It’s all part of networking on campus.

We are thrilled with the astonishing success of our graduates who are thriving in the industry and are represented by some of the best agents in the country including:

Noble Kaplan Abrams

Talent House

Characters

Butler Ruston Bell

Ambition Talent

AMP Talent

Graduates have gone on to direct/produce/write/and star in several films that have premiered at TIFF, Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Toronto Film School’s Festival of Films. They have also made appearances in both commercials and TV series including Degrassi, Covert Affairs, Rookie Blue, Hannibal, Odd Squad, Mr. D, Reign, Motives and Murders, Web of Lies, Sensitive Skin, and ReBoot. Also look for our seasoned faculty members on stages and TV screens across the country including Andrew Moodie as the villain in the series finale of Orphan Black or John Tench as T-Bone in the new Ubisoft video game Watchdogs 2.

Have an amazing term! We encourage you to strive towards excellence and we are honoured to continue the journey with you.

Hart Massey and Michael Ayoub are the Coordinators of The Acting for Film, TV and Theatre Program at Toronto Film School. Hart is also an actor, writer, and producer, known for his television shows Hart of the Annex (2006) and the Gemini-nominated series The Film Student (2009-2013). Michael is a graduate of the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York City, under the brilliant Sanford Meisner. As an actor, director, producer and teacher, Michael has been an active force in the business for more than forty years.